Quick, list every existing branded social profile your company has in its arsenal. If you work for a small business, you might rattle off a short list of “the classics”—Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, etc. But if you work for the average enterprise, you’ve got a nerve-wracking list of around 178 discrete social accounts to juggle—not including employee accounts. This shockingly-high number comes to us courtesy of a new Altimeter report,A Strategy for Managing Social Media Proliferation.
The unchecked growth of branded social profiles presents a number of serious risks to the enterprise:
- Complicates goal-setting, reporting and evaluation
- Dilutes control of social presence
- Prevents integration of data, tools and user privileges
- Creates inconsistent, fragmented customer experiences
These risks wind up wreaking havoc when unmanaged:
“At one large company we talked to, more than a quarter of their social accounts had been spammed or abandoned; 50% were fledging or only slowly growing, and only the last quarter was deemed ‘mature,’ with sustained customer engagement and consistent content.”
Altimeter makes it clear—there isn’t a panacea in sight for what ails these corporations. No single product, content strategy, or training program can be relied on to make things better. Instead, they suggest a three-stage regimen, combining heavy doses of the following:
- Auditing, goal-setting, consolidation, workflow design, needs analysis
- Finding the right vendor mix, budgeting
- Educating participants, extensive QA testing, evaluation against goals, optimization
The full report contains plenty of detail, but it’s also very linear and actionable. I’ve embedded it below, so dig in!
